Musk in trouble, the scandal surrounding AI nudity on Grok is spreading. Countries are blocking it, investigations are underway

What is new in the whole story about the scandal is that it has increasingly focused on where the content can still be shared. WIRED previously warned that explicit material could also appear through public links on Grok’s official site, which was the main reason the problem was said to be wider than the Xu feed itself. On January 11, the Guardian further described how the ‘put her in a bikini’ trend exploded and grew into mass ‘removal’ of clothes from pictures, which increased political and public pressure.

The biggest ‘follow up’ in recent days is the reaction of the UK. Ofcom launched an investigation into Xu following public outrage over sexualised AI images linked to Grok, in addition to checking compliance with obligations under the Online Safety Act. The British government also got involved in the story: Technology Minister Liz Kendall released an official statement demanding swift action over reports of unauthorized intimate deepfakes.

In Europe, the cultivation is being done in parallel. through the Digital Services Act. Reuters previously reported that the European Commission called this phenomenon illegal and ‘abhorrent’, and in a more recent text it states that the Commission has extended an order for Xu to preserve Grok-related data and internal materials, which is part of a broader oversight of how the platform manages illegal content. The German minister also publicly called on the EU to take legal steps, which shows that the topic in the EU is not intimidating.

In principle, it is somewhat unbelievable that a large platform like X, which is behind Grok, has practically refused to react as it should to a scandal of such a sensitive nature and such a wide spread. Placing a questionable AI photo generator behind a paywall is a half-baked solution to put it mildly, and it can also be interpreted as an attempt to make additional profit from the whole situation. All in all, it’s clear to Musk that the only thing standing between the people who need to generate such problematic content and the tools that will do it for them in a few clicks is a subscription to X’s AI program.

The point of this continuation is that the ‘cutting’ of functions in itself does not close the story, but shifts it to a new phase: regulatory bodies are now looking for evidence of risk assessments, removal of illegal content and protection of children, and part of the criticism goes to the fact that the restriction to ‘paying users’ looks like the problem is only being monetized instead of being solved. If new measures or penalties appear in the coming days, it will probably be in the direction of proving compliance and concrete obligations, not just cosmetic changes to the tool.